Electronic Arts Reports Q3 FY13 Financial Results has the latest preliminary earnings figures for the gaming giant. The losses they report are less than the same period last year, and things are going well according to top brass: "Despite a challenging quarter, we were able to deliver non-GAAP EPS at the high end of our guidance range," said Chief Executive Officer John Riccitiello. "We are investing for the future wave of growth that we foresee in digital and console." VG247 has details from the post earnings conference call, where some of the blame was for the quarter's losses was heaped upon Medal of Honor: Warfighter, which performed "well below expectations" and "didnít deliver," with COO Peter Moore saying the game also deserved better reviews than it received. Word is the military shooter franchise is being "taken out of rotation," and will return after an unspecified "rest."

RollinThundr wrote on Jan 31, 2013, 17:24:Not sure if you've read many of Cutter's political post but he clearly hates capitalism anyway so to him EA really is evil.

Capitalism isn't without many major flaws, people have plenty of reasons to hate it these days as it's looking more and more like it will be a historical failure in a longer context.

Capitilism is awesome, what you are experiencing these days, is called Corruptilism... with a hint of communism..

If you have not noticed, its all about securing exclusive rights, to ensure you dominate the market and bleed competion to inflate profits..

Fact is.. There once used to be a law that was. to sell or provide a service for a minimal profit.. that minimal is now non existant... its rape and plunder, and kill any way possible.. which is why capitilism looks bleak right now... Its greed and until you vote out every politician from now for the next 20 years every term.. nothing will change.. you have to get their educated ways of abusing the systems out of office... you can't legally steal the country blind if you don't know the tricks

in a pragmatic approach, they're fucking their own bottom line by not understanding the way games are made, because some suit who's never visited a development studio says: "you know what'll save us money? just have them make the whole game in 1/3rd the normal development time!"

that's dumb, EA is stupid when they push dates like this.

and it's all because they got super butthurt by looking at CoD sales, and the green envy monster just destroyed the MoH franchise.

EA is dumb for doing shit like this, not evil. different. things.

No, they're evil because their motivation is quick returns for minimal output. They know what happens when you shove unfinished games out the door. They're not dumb, just greedy, which makes them evil.

you're confusing evil with short-sighted impulsive behavior. trust me, these two ideas can co-exist as separate things, i'm an expert.

EA is a private company, who's only reason to exist is to make money, welcome to capitalism. if that's evil to you then may i suggest one of the other successful market ideologies on the planet.

for them to stumble in their effort to make money by wanting to make more money faster isn't evil, it's just as you said, greed.

you can't see things for their true nature and still judge them as good and evil like some omnipotent deity. there are evil things in this world, we're not short of that. you mock the really bad shit when you put videogame publishers holding unrealistic launch dates for their products in the same league as people who spread hate and fear and war. you're just using hyperbole to try and get your point across, it carries no weight.

Not sure if you've read many of Cutter's political post but he clearly hates capitalism anyway so to him EA really is evil.

in a pragmatic approach, they're fucking their own bottom line by not understanding the way games are made, because some suit who's never visited a development studio says: "you know what'll save us money? just have them make the whole game in 1/3rd the normal development time!"

that's dumb, EA is stupid when they push dates like this.

and it's all because they got super butthurt by looking at CoD sales, and the green envy monster just destroyed the MoH franchise.

EA is dumb for doing shit like this, not evil. different. things.

No, they're evil because their motivation is quick returns for minimal output. They know what happens when you shove unfinished games out the door. They're not dumb, just greedy, which makes them evil.

you're confusing evil with short-sighted impulsive behavior. trust me, these two ideas can co-exist as separate things, i'm an expert.

EA is a private company, who's only reason to exist is to make money, welcome to capitalism. if that's evil to you then may i suggest one of the other successful market ideologies on the planet.

for them to stumble in their effort to make money by wanting to make more money faster isn't evil, it's just as you said, greed.

you can't see things for their true nature and still judge them as good and evil like some omnipotent deity. there are evil things in this world, we're not short of that. you mock the really bad shit when you put videogame publishers holding unrealistic launch dates for their products in the same league as people who spread hate and fear and war. you're just using hyperbole to try and get your point across, it carries no weight.

(Regarding SW:Battlefront II) Frostshite is a horrible piece of shit engine that makes games look artificial as if you were playing on a movie set instead of the actual location. -CJ_Parker

TheDevilYouKnow wrote on Jan 31, 2013, 08:48:"Despite a challenging quarter, we were able to deliver non-GAAP EPS at the high end of our guidance range," said Chief Executive Officer John Riccitiello. "We are investing for the future wave of growth that we foresee in digital and console."

What does that mean? They do not even speak the same language as gamers. They are completely out of touch with the folks who buy their products. If they went under I wouldn't shed a tear, although it makes me sad that so many of their titles are re-hashed garbage and everyone still continues to buy it. Vote with your dollar folks - It'd better to keep on playing a great old game than to waste your hard earned money on re-packaged tripe.

Not to belittle you, but is "digital and console" really that hard to grok? EA is hedging their bets that those two areas will see significant sales growth.

sauron wrote on Jan 30, 2013, 22:10:Same with CoD. Eventually the audience is going to get bored. Even the knuckle draggers.

Think it has more to do with the games being incredibly mediocre, re-hashed and uninspired. Once someone comes along and creates the next big shooter, it'll break records all over again. Don't kid yourself, just because CoD and MoH are absolute garbage doesn't mean people are going to stop playing shooters any time soon, people love competitiveness and violence, online FPS fills that nicely.

It's my optimistic hope that these horrible shooters inspire a new generation of developers to create FPS games that don't...suck.

I hate to say it but BF3 is still the only 'fun' current shooter I've played. The only reason I play it so much is because it's good in comparison to CoD or MoH, it might not be good on its own, but by comparison you should feel lucky it's even around to play, although at this rate Battlefield 4 will just be a direct clone of CoD.

I agree with you that there is still room for a breakout genre redefining game. The problem is no one has the courage to develop something unique and would rather take the safe road based on focus groups. Games are no doubt better looking now but they have lost gameplay elements and become generic over time to appeal to everyone. Its kind of a catch 22.

The video from Total Biscuit "Modern Military Shooters in a nutshell" sums it all up. We all know the flaws of CoD's SP campaign. It is already that bad as it is. A slightly interactive action movie, which disguised itself as a game, because you can shoot at things if you wish, but it doesnt matter if you do, because the story progresses without you actually playing anything.

Even more baffling is that they could manage to fuck up a shooter when they also have BF3 to base stuff on and Frostbite 2 to power it. But they managed to make Warfighter MP a total joke. And SP even worse than BF3's (and that was already bad, though pretty epic in a Michael Bay style way)

Read more on Gamasutra:http://www.gamasutra.comEA had heavy financial troubles. They had to fire people and had to freeze the marketing budget for a while, because of the very low sales of Warfighter (Bruhaha).

Incompetence begins at the top. People warned them about Medal of Honor but they went ahead for a second dip in the pool. You have to create value to make people want a franchise, MOH had no value. It was just another me-too FPS game with little reason to choose it over any other so unsurprisingly, people didn't. Why they wasted resources and marketing on a second one with all the same mistakes as the first is just baffling.

Quote "Despite a challenging quarter, we were able to deliver non-GAAP EPS at the high end of our guidance range," said Chief Executive Officer John Riccitiello. "We are investing for the future wave of growth that we foresee in digital and console."

What does that mean? They do not even speak the same language as gamers. They are completely out of touch with the folks who buy their products. If they went under I wouldn't shed a tear, although it makes me sad that so many of their titles are re-hashed garbage and everyone still continues to buy it. Vote with your dollar folks - It'd better to keep on playing a great old game than to waste your hard earned money on re-packaged tripe.

Closed Betas wrote on Jan 31, 2013, 00:31:Nice signs they are on the way out.. Starting to sound just like the same chumps running our government... time will take its course.... and your time is running short EA.. and we'll stand back and applaud

Looks like Ubisoft will surpass EA as the better company sooner than I thought... Just gotta wait until Watch Dogs comes out.

Read more on Gamasutra:http://www.gamasutra.comEA had heavy financial troubles. They had to fire people and had to freeze the marketing budget for a while, because of the very low sales of Warfighter (Bruhaha).

sauron wrote on Jan 30, 2013, 22:10:Same with CoD. Eventually the audience is going to get bored. Even the knuckle draggers.

Think it has more to do with the games being incredibly mediocre, re-hashed and uninspired. Once someone comes along and creates the next big shooter, it'll break records all over again. Don't kid yourself, just because CoD and MoH are absolute garbage doesn't mean people are going to stop playing shooters any time soon, people love competitiveness and violence, online FPS fills that nicely.

It's my optimistic hope that these horrible shooters inspire a new generation of developers to create FPS games that don't...suck.

I hate to say it but BF3 is still the only 'fun' current shooter I've played. The only reason I play it so much is because it's good in comparison to CoD or MoH, it might not be good on its own, but by comparison you should feel lucky it's even around to play, although at this rate Battlefield 4 will just be a direct clone of CoD.

MOH: Warfighter was a boring and mediocre retread. I was given it last October and couldn't bring myself to even finish it. The multi-player was the worst example of a run-n-gun twitch-shooter COD clone. Graphically and game play wise it was a horrible experience, the single-player was so scripted, nearly 40% of the time, you were just watching rather than playing.

If it got bad reviews, it shows that reviewers still have a conscience!

EA blaming the franchise, they are showing their typical ignorance and arrogance. It's not the game, but what you did with it!

Develop something original, and develop on each specific platform. Console games can be good and so can PC games, but console games are terrible on the PC and PC games won't bend to fit on the older console platforms. Jack of all trades is master of none.

If you expect people to pay such high prices for games (£40+ / $65+) then they should be WORTH it. Or drop the price by 30% to reflect the 30% of content you held back, only to dribble out later as overpriced DLC.

There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Closed Betas wrote on Jan 31, 2013, 00:31:Nice signs they are on the way out.. Starting to sound just like the same chumps running our government... time will take its course.... and your time is running short EA.. and we'll stand back and applaud

Looks like Ubisoft will surpass EA as the better company sooner than I thought... Just gotta wait until Watch Dogs comes out.

Nice signs they are on the way out.. Starting to sound just like the same chumps running our government... time will take its course.... and your time is running short EA.. and we'll stand back and applaud

Whiskers wrote on Jan 30, 2013, 22:01:Maybe it will go on sale now. I've wanted to try Warfighter but for some reason it never seems to go on sale. You'd think if it underperformed they'd discount the price to push more units

Not sure if you would get much enjoyment from it, the multiplayer was the best part and now it's a ghost town. Just took a look, less than 40 people playing right now.